I've been working closely with the Trivandi team who are operating as the Event Delivery Partner for the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games and it’s been interesting to see the way they are capturing lessons learned throughout the project. Having spent years teaching reflective practice in academia, seeing the team practice this in the flow of work has made me think about something I suspect many of us in the major events sector quietly know but rarely address directly: we are not, as an industry, particularly good at learning from ourselves!
The structural problem
In a previous piece I wrote about what happens to knowledge when a mega event ends - how teams disperse, tacit knowledge walks out the door, and the next organising committee can sometimes essentially start from scratch. The knowledge transfer challenge is a sector-wide one and one that some of the mega events rights holders and organising committees are tackling with their transfer of knowledge and embedded PMO processes. But there's a more immediate version of the same problem that plays out inside smaller organisations involved in the event delivery.
The project management literature is unambiguous: the single biggest differentiating factor between projects that succeed and those that don't is the "willingness to publish and distribute lessons learned” (APM). Of course, budgets matter, team experience matters - but what makes the biggest difference is the Lessons learned & knowledge culture.
For those of us working in major and mega events, that finding should stop us in our track - because if there's one sector that has historically struggled to capture, share and act on what it learns, it's ours.
In an industry where delivery pressure is relentless, organising committees dissolve and the next deadline is never far away, structured reflection on ways of working is almost always the first thing to go. Post-project reviews become rushed wash-ups, action logs don't get completed and insights that could change how the next project runs sit in someone's head, or in a report that nobody reads.
What a genuine lessons learned culture actually delivers
When lessons learned processes are properly embedded, the benefits work at three levels.
Operationally, teams stop repeating avoidable mistakes. Weekly action logs, structured retrospectives and honest evaluation reports mean that what went wrong - and what went right - is captured in real time, not reconstructed from memory months later. The difference in quality between those two things is enormous.
Organisationally, a well-maintained repository of lessons learned becomes one of the most valuable assets a business holds. It’s institutional memory that outlives any individual or contract and having it means the organisation gets smarter with every project it delivers, rather than beginning fresh each time.
And at the reputational and commercial level, the most forward-thinking organisations are taking their internal insights and turning them outward - into thought leadership, published best practice and public knowledge-sharing. In a sector where credibility and track record are what reputations hinge on, being able to say "here's what we learned and here's what we'd do differently" genuinely separates you from your competitors.
It’s a culture change, not a process change
In order to embed a valuable lessons learned culture, we need to move beyond basic evaluation. Feedback surveys, wash-up meetings and high-level reports are standard – but they are too often just tick box exercises. What is needed is cultural change – reflective practices need to become a habit, woven into how we work week to week, not just bolted on at the end.
It’s something Trivandi takes seriously. In our work as Official Event Delivery Partner for Glasgow 2026, the team work hard to capture and action lessons as they go –sharing challenges and successes in regular team meetings, having honest conversations about what isn’t working (whilst there is still time to fix it!) and completing lessons learned surveys after every delivery milestone. All of this hinges on leadership valuing learning, not just delivery.
Five principles that actually make a difference
Based on the framework we've been developing at Trivandi, a few things matter more than others:
- Start during the project, not after it. A log completed weekly is worth ten times more than a retrospective conducted from fading memory. Capture insights while they're live and specific — the further you get from the moment, the more you lose the texture of what actually happened.
- Capture multiple voices. Internal team reflections are valuable, but client and stakeholder perspectives often surface the most important truths. Build external feedback into the process from the start, not as an afterthought.
- Make your repository genuinely usable. A lessons learned database that nobody can navigate is a filing cabinet in a locked room. Invest in clear categorisation and accessible formats - one-page summaries, dashboards, visual references - so people actually find and use what's in there.
- Close the loop. Reflection without action is just a conversation. Every review process should produce a concrete action plan that feeds directly into the next project's planning cycle. Without that step, you're generating insight but not changing anything.
- Move through maturity, don't leap to it. The temptation is to build the perfect system from day one. The reality is that embedding reflective practice takes time and won't survive being forced. Start with the habits. Build the culture. Scale the process as it matures around it.
The opportunity ahead
The major events sector is at an interesting moment. Scrutiny on legacy, value and knowledge transfer has never been higher. Host cities and governments are asking harder questions about what gets left behind - not just in infrastructure, but in expertise.
Organisations that can demonstrate they learn, evolve and share knowledge aren't just better at delivery. They're better partners, better advocates for the sector, and may well be better placed to win the next bid.